Solar energy remains a hot idea, despite flap

What is needed is more of a realistic view of this energy source that has bedeviled mankind for centuries. First, it isn't "free." Second, it will always cost a little more, but it carries broader economic and environmental advantages.

With that understanding, voters can better deal with the political follies surrounding Measure B. As usual, the political insider games at City Hall once they became public have tainted a worthwhile initiative involving the city utility, the Department of Water and Power, which through a combination of local leadership and statewide pressure from Gov. Schwarzenegger's administration has caught the renewable energy bug.

With solar, you have to start with the realization that it currently is one of the most expensive renewable, or pollution-free, ways to produce electricity, and the economics even within the solar space vary among individual home and small-business systems, larger industrial-size ones, and the huge solar-thermal projects proposed for the Southern California deserts.

Most of the signs are positive for solar development, but aside from the still-disputed cost of the DWP program that Measure B is supposed to help pay for there  is no doubt that the cumulative cost of making solar a bigger part of our energy supply runs into the tens of billions of dollars category. And this is just part of the answer to a much more costly attack on global warming that will take decades and cost trillions of dollars.

A recent example is the approval by California regulators of a $2 billion, 120-mile transmission line in the southern end of the state to bring power supplies from still-to-be-built solar, wind and geothermal electricity projects in far-off Imperial County. San Diego County's ever-expanding population needs the green juice.

An advantage for the Measure B-type program is that no added transmission lines need to be built. DWP will widely site smaller solar photovoltaic systems that convert sunlight to electricity and hook them to the existing grid system. The city utility will own and maintain the solar panels which, compared with traditional electric-generation plants, require little day-to-day maintenance.

As the L.A. City Council's overly hurried action to put Measure B on the March ballot demonstrates, there is a lot of momentum behind solar energy development these days. Hopefully, policymakers will continue to see this and other renewable energy development as an added economic stimulus.

A recent two-year progress report on California's 10-year solar initiative for providing homes and businesses with incentives to install solar PV systems on their roofs indicated that some 414 megawatts worth of solar systems have been installed or have been approved for rebates, and an additional 150 megawatts is expected to be added in the next 12 to 18 months, bringing with it what the state energy agencies estimate will be an added $2.5 billion of investment in the state's sagging economy.

While the City Council consultant's report on Measure B still deserves more public airing, it should not become a roadblock or detour to the state's current solar push. Solar is still a hot idea, and even more so in the environment and economy we face in 2009.